Education for Australia's information future

Digital disruption and an increasingly networked society drive rapid change in many professions and a corresponding need for change in tertiary education. Across the world, information education has, to date, prepared graduates for employment in discrete professions, such as librarianship, records management, archives and teacher librarianship. However, contemporary information practices are less defined and are demanding of new professional skill-sets and understandings. This paper reports a study that consulted Australia's tertiary academics about the current circumstances of information education in the academy and elicited a vision and a concern for future directions in Australian information education.     

Sophia's funds of knowledge: theoretical and pedagogical insights,possibilities and dilemmas

Children's interests and thinking emanate from their daily lived experiences in their families, communities and cultures. This paper substantiates the view that the construct of ‘funds of knowledge’, understood through the lens of ‘cultural repertoires of practice’, provides an analytical tool for early years teachers to interpret their observations of, and conversations with, young children. The paper reports findings from a qualitative case study in early childhood settings of children's interests and thinking. The methods included participant observation, interviews with teachers and children and gathering of pedagogical documentation. This paper specifically draws on and problematises the funds of knowledge and related gendered thinking that a young Chinese girl revealed through her interests and practices. It argues that although the construct of funds of knowledge provides an authentic conceptual framework to guide and justify teachers' pedagogical decision-making, it should not be accepted uncritically. The concept may raise some issues for teachers' responses to children's thinking and relationships with diverse families. Teachers and researchers have future work to undertake to understand children's complex cultural knowledges and positionings in an increasingly globalised world.     

Developing Emotional Intelligence Skills among Practicing Leaders: Reality or Myth?

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a leadership training program on participants’ emotional intelligence scores. The target population for the study consisted of participants in leadership positions. Seventy‐one participants from over 30 countries took the pre‐test, and 45 subjects of the sample participated in the second training and took the post‐test. The findings of the study show that there was growth in mean scores a year after training and coaching had occurred.     

Learning by Doing: Experiential Learning in Criminal Justice

This article highlights the efforts of colleagues in a criminal justice department to offer experiential learning opportunities (ELOs) to undergraduate students. Operating within the framework of a liberal arts curriculum, we provide criminal justice majors with a range of opportunities that fall under the general rubric of “experiential learning”, including the following: internships, field trips, service-learning, and research projects. Our goal was to combine the academic rigors of traditional, classroom-based learning with exposure to hands-on, real-world, subject-based knowledge. We explain the multistage framework that is used to tie all of our ELOs together across the curriculum. Results from a senior and alumni survey indicate that experiential learning offers significant academic and professional benefits for students.     

360° Folio Networking: Enhancing Advising Interactions and Expanding Mentoring Opportunities with ePortfolios

This article examines how students can use the ePortfolio tool and platform to facilitate and foster increased opportunities for interactions with formal academic advisors and informal mentors. The learning documented within an ePortfolio can be especially useful as a resource for advisors and mentors who are looking not only to connect with their students in meaningful and relevant ways, but who also seek to understand their advisees' backgrounds and interests in order to better guide and support them along their academic journey. Drawing on theories from advising, mentoring, social networking, and communities of practice, the 360° folio networking framework proposed explains the enhanced advising interactions and expanded mentoring opportunities that result when applied to ePortfolios. Examples from several institutions illustrating how ePortfolios have been integrated into advising and mentoring programs are explored.     

A comparison of peer and tutor feedback

We report on a study comparing peer feedback with feedback written by tutors on a large, undergraduate software engineering programming class. Feedback generated by peers is generally held to be of lower quality to feedback from experienced tutors, and this study sought to explore the extent and nature of this difference. We looked at how seriously peers undertook the reviewing task, differences in the level of detail in feedback comments and differences with respect to tone (whether comments were positive, negative or neutral, offered advice or addressed the author personally). Peer feedback was also compared by academic standing, and by gender. We found that, while tutors wrote longer comments than peers and gave more specific feedback, in other important respects (such as offering advice) the differences were not significant.